SARP: Synchronous Adaptive Routing Protocol for MANETs

The aim of a routing protocol is to compute valid routes allowing every couple of nodes in the network to communicate at anytime. When the network topology is evolving over time, routing decisions should be constantly reconsidered. The main goal is to ensure a valid routing through time at the lowest possible cost. Conventional proactive routing protocols periodically recompute their routing tables; but due to their inherent nature based on shortest paths, they select longer links that ensure faster routing but are amenable to rapid breakages as nodes move around. Using short periods certainly allows a better tracking of the topology changes; however, it induces a higher control signaling overhead. An adequate trade-off between the routing period size and the traffic overhead should be found.In this paper, we propose a new mechanism that keeps sensing the network mobility level to properly adjust the routing period size. It relies on a distributed algorithm that collects the network cartography which is then used to self-regulate the routing period size. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme correctly tracks changes and properly adjusts the current routing period size leading to much better performances.